I love my cats.  Most certainly, yes.  I love them.  I have to… or they are both going to end up out in the snow in the next 30 seconds…  I love coffee in the morning as well… yes, coffee… and that pot isn’t done yet… dammit.

It seemed like a good idea.  I’ll get a real Christmas tree this year.  Haven’t done it in something like 10 years, long overdue.  We have our Charlie Brown artificial tree, but a friend showed me the tiny, equivalent-sized real tree she bought and… hey, maybe I can do that!  We used to get two real trees a year, after all… Maybe a change would be a good thing and help get me in the spirit, despite what’s been a pretty brutal 2016.

Oh wait a second… the cats.  I saw Stormy do a flying tackle of Charlie Brown tree before.  Is this a good idea?  What could happen if they tackle this one?  Water all over the carpet?  A stain that will never come out? Pine needles even more all over the place than is normally a hassle to clean up?  Well… come on, what are the odds?  Pretty slim… and you get that awesome tree smell in the house for a month.  Totally worth it.  I’m in!!

Ok, fast forward a couple weeks… it’s been a constant chess game… where’s Stormy?  Yep, there he is, stalking the bottom of the tree… staring down the tree skirt, his apparent sworn enemy.  “What are you hiding under there?  I know you’re hiding something!”  His pea-sized cat brain seems to be convinced it’s something he wants.  Why conceal it otherwise, right?… “Stormy, get away from the tree…”, I say, as if he will suddenly develop the capacity for any comprehension of those words.  Oh, right, he’s a cat, he’s an idiot… Where’s Lucky, for that matter?  Oh, wait, Lucky’s hiding somewhere.  He’s a coward.  He’d never try something so bold as an attack on the tree in broad daylight.  His boldest move to date is probably a yack on the carpet in another room… when no one is around.  Or that dump I found on the carpet the night they slept in the office, with BOTH litter boxes three feet away… yep, that seems like his speed… little passive aggressive bastard…

I wonder if the coffee is done…?  Nope.  Shit.

I guess I should’ve seen the escalation coming.  It was inevitable, I suppose.  Man versus beast versus Douglas Fir… versus… beast.  Where the “beasts” are both idiots.  I was outnumbered from Day One.  They have me flanked and outgunned.  I can’t stay up all night… I can’t be here all day, though, given both of them sleep what seems like 20 hours in a day, that doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot.  Really the most active time of the day for them is when they want to be fed when I get up and then 3 o’clock in the morning, when it’s just damn hilarious to them to fight, run a few sprints around the entire house, and jump up and down the cat tree on the other side of the wall from my bed, slamming it into the wall in the process, sometimes waking me with a sound echoing of the coming apocalypse… oh no, wait, it’s just the damn cats… being assholes at 3am.  Definitely not having coffee then, I’d never get back to sleep.

You’d think, having rescued these two idiots, they’d be a little more docile… heck, even a bit more appreciative.  I “rescued” you two morons… doesn’t that engender even the slightest hint of “let’s do our best not to piss him off and do dumb stuff” in a cat?  Apparently not.  This is the cost of no appreciable longer term memory I guess.  Oddly, they know where to go for food… that part they get.  Being nice to me first thing in the morning when it’s time for food… yep, they are all over that.  That behavior they can learn… little charlatans.

So, where did this go so dreadfully wrong?  I don’t really know, to be honest.  It’s been an ongoing back and forth with Stormy… him pulling the tree skirt open… sticking a paw into the water basin… pulling a low hanging branch off here and there… carrying it across the room or the house… forgetting why he had it in his mouth in the first place… spitting it out… like he’s creating a little treasure hunt for me… how cute, right?  No.  Not cute.  Pain in the ass… more like that.  More like… I wonder what he’d look like without his fur… cat shave!!!

Yesterday afternoon, I was reading something on the computer… and it happened… SLURP… SLURP… SLURP… what the hell is that?  I look over and Stormy has pulled the tree skirt apart far enough that his entire head is plunged in the water basin and he’s just going to town like he found an oasis in the middle of a freaking desert… “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?”  He doesn’t even stop to look at me… as if he knows… when he gets here, the feast is over…. better drink this shit up right now…  that pea-sized cat brain is either really working quickly or not at all… I guess it depends on how suicidal I want to imagine him to be.

I get to the tree… he runs like he just came out of the bank vault with a bag of money jammed down his pants… ok, he doesn’t have pants… but that WOULD look hilarious, come on… I look… there’s almost NO WATER left for the tree!  I swear, that thing was probably at least half filled in the morning… HOW MUCH WATER DID HE JUST DRINK?  Holy shit.  For that much water gone, I should hear a sloshing sound as he walks across the room… either that, or he ought to be in the litter box for the next hour or two, relieving his clearly overfilled, tiny ass bladder…

Ok, this bullshit has to stop.  I’m calling in the big guns now.  Plastic bag time.

I pulled out my weapon of last resort… the plastic grocery bag.  Both cats immediately head for the stairs at full blast and… oh, hey, Lucky… had no idea you were hiding back there in the corner till now… sneaky little coward that you are… (damn, I need that coffee)…

Now the coast is clear and I can find a solution.  I’m an engineer dammit… these are two idiot cats.  No way they are going to beat me on this one.  Three semesters of physics alone and I should be able to beat them down… forget about all the rest of the chemistry, math, and other shit… I’ve got this.  We’ll take their sworn enemy, the plastic bag, and we’ll make HIM the defender of the tree.  Like putting an armed guard in the way.  They won’t possibly jack around with this one… impenetrable fortress of security… one plastic bag covering the connections on the tree skirts versus two very fearful, idiot cats… no way this solution will blow up in my face… no… freaking… way.  Yeah.  So I thought… and I’m saying these cats are stupid…

I don’t remember hearing anything last night.  I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work when bad things happen under cover of darkness… I don’t know how they did it.  I can’t say if it was entirely one or actually both of them, because Lucky apparently has some temporary bravado when no one is around… but when I woke it all seemed so normal at first.  Stormy making a ton of noise meowing, laying parallel to the opening of my bedroom door, testing to see if I’ll trip over him on my first, non-coffee supported steps of the day… Lucky, seeing the door open, runs like Hell towards the office, as if my mere appearance means that the bowls are already full, or as if seeing him run there will make me all excited to feed them.  Nope, sorry dude, it doesn’t work like that… Without coffee… your lives don’t mean much right now.  That pot brewing is your best hope for a meal, so shut up, be patient, and try to stay out of the way for the next three minutes… interfering with this can only go badly for you… really, really badly.

I take a few steps forward into the great room… I’m not sure why, but I noticed the bag first.  Maybe because it was ALL the way across the room… near the chair in the opposing corner… as if the cats spent all night getting it as far away from the tree as possible… their own version of a “fuck you” gesture, just to be clear it’s not the boss of them… not this time.  Not this tree.

“What the hell?”  I’m pretty sure those words came out of my mouth.  I can’t say really, no coffee and shock will do that sometimes…  I immediately snapped my head down at whiplash speed to check out the tree… WHERE THE HELL IS THE TREE SKIRT?!?  At first, I didn’t even see it.  Nothing… I just saw the tree stand, with a tiny amount of water in it… exposed.  naked.  exploited.  Oh my heavenly God… what happened here?  You poor tree…  The branches seemed just a little lower this morning and there is tree carnage everywhere.  I don’t remember this much of a mess yesterday when I went to bed.  It looks like they not only tossed the bag across the room and removed the tree skirt… they beat the hell out of the tree too… oh my god.  Cat vengeance is a real thing… the tree skirt was there, crumpled up in the corner… as if they said “GET OUT OF OUR WAY!” and tossed it to the side, right before they started in on the tree itself.  The horror… the horror… where is Marlon Brando when I need him…

And here’s the cats… acting as if nothing has happened… playing out their normal morning routine.  Should that be what they’re doing right now?  Doesn’t the perpetrator understand the gravity of the crime?  You don’t smash a store window, take a bunch of stuff, then walk in and buy a stick of gum the next morning, do you?  What kind of evil criminal minds are living with me?  This is scary.  Maybe I should be locking that bedroom door when I sleep… I do hear Stormy smacking at the door knob some mornings.  I’ve always assumed he just wanted me to come play at 3am… or feed them… or make coffee… maybe it was a murder plot all along.  No, they can’t be that stupid, who would feed them then?  They haven’t figured out the impenetrable security of the pony tail holder that keeps the pantry shut, so I’m probably safe for the time being…

The question is what to do now.  I could kill them both… certainly an option.  Is “double catricide” even a thing?  Is there such a thing as “justifiable catricide”?  It sounds plausible at this moment, but it could be the lack of coffee… I understand and accept that risk exists.  I suppose the people at the shelter might not appreciate me adopting and killing them both… kind of defeats the “rescue” concept.  I could try to explain that they plotted a Christmas tree assassination, and I was the only one who could save the poor defenseless tree… but what happens if they don’t celebrate Christmas… do I need to get dragged into a world religions conversation?… or even worse, find out that they’re the people who bitch about a Christmas tree in front of city hall in some nowhere town, because it somehow threatens their freedom of religion… as if the tree is going to come to their place of worship and burn it to the ground?  It’s a Christmas tree people… not a terrorist.  It’s not a ballistic missile… it’s generally a symbol of something positive and good.  When we take down the trees, the terrorists win… wait, maybe that’s a line in a movie.  Strike that part.  Damn, I need my coffee…

Anyway, what do I do now… have we reached a point where the cats kicking each other in the head during their daily fights has finally taken its toll?  I thought cats were morons before… this can’t be good.  Maybe this is why they is why they use “litter” both to describe a number of newborn cats and the place where they go to the bathroom… maybe more brainless furry criminals entering the world is an “oh shit” moment, and I’ve only just realized it.

This much is for certain.  This war is not over.  Eight days till Christmas… and I have only begun to fight… (or whatever that Revolutionary War quote is… that I might remember… if this stupid coffee ever gets done)…

-CJG 12/17/2016